Hundreds of miles apart, but still connected by the same stubborn weather system, urban St. Louis and rural Appalachia are showing how devastating flash flooding can be when souped-up storms dump massive amounts of rain with no place to go.
July 30, 2022
Hundreds of miles apart, but still connected by the same stubborn weather system, urban St. Louis and rural Appalachia are showing how devastating flash flooding can be when souped-up storms dump massive amounts of rain with no place to go.
In St. Louis, the paved city environment couldn’t soak up the intense rainfall. In Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, steep hills and terrain of narrow river channels funneled water into the same place.
Although a single storm system triggered the downpours, different geographic features played a role in the middle, ending with the same result: Flooding, the second deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States. Floods kill about 98 Americans a year and last year claimed 146 lives.
« Places like St. Louis and Kentucky, even though they’re different, they’re overwhelmed, » said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. « There’s just no way to move that much water coming out of the sky fast enough. It needs to go somewhere. »
A LOT OF RAIN
In Missouri and Illinois, the first batch of downpours Tuesday and Wednesday dropped a foot (30 centimeters) of rain in some places, up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) in others with another 2 to 4 inches falling Thursday. In eastern Kentucky, 8 to 10.5 inches (20 to 27 centimeters) fell.
« It’s not just how much rain fell, but where it fell, how exposed people were, how close the infrastructure is to where the heavy rainfall falls or where the channels rise, » said Kate Abshire, flash flood services lead at the National Weather Services’ Water Resources Branch.
